In the World of Men: Tagore's Arrival in the Spiritual Domain of ...

439 Rupkatha Journal Vol 2 No 4
For the time being the struggle continues. In a letter dated 28 th March,
1894, he writes:
I am overwhelmed by this awareness of the baffling mystery within me which I
can neither understand nor control. I know not where it will take me or I it, I know
not what I can do or cannot do. I cannot see, nor am I consulted about, what
surges up in my heart, what flows in my veins, what stirs in my brain, and yet I
move about and keep up the pretence that I am the master of my thoughts and
deeds. I am like a living pianoforte with a complicated network of wires hidden
within it, but what makes it play and who comes suddenly to play on it and when
and why, I do not know. I can only know what is being p-laye4d at the moment,
whether the keys are struck in joy or in sorrow, whether the notes are sharp or
flat, high-pitched or low, whether the music is in tune or out of tune,- but wait, do I
really know even that? 43
It is that Providence, that life long companion, Jiban Debata, who has
seated at the helm of his boat and is steering it, this time to the faint smiles and
big drops of tears, rising and falling like endless waves, in the complex labyrinth
of life in rural Bengal. Out of this contact emerge Manasi (Of the Mind, 1890),
Sonar Tori (The Golden Boat, 1894) and the short stories.
In a letter to one of his friends Rabindranath tried to answer the query as
to who was the object of his love poems in Manasi:
Man’s cravings are unlimited, his capacity and reach very limited, and so he
builds up in his mind an image of his desires which he can adore. The beloved in
Manasi poems is of the mind only. It is my first, tentative, incomplete image of
God. Will I ever be able to complete it? 44
Manasi is no particular woman of this earth, but one who resides in the mind
only. Seeking her, results into not possession, but evermore unrest and further
seeking only. In one of his poems, the poet asks:
Who will make me mad once again? This heart, cold, indifferent and virtuous, is
become like a stone. Whose eyes will make the fountain flow out of this very
rock? But what happens when such a one comes? I come near, I hold her hands,
I crush her against my heart, wanting to suck all her loveliness into me, to loot
with my kisses the smiles on her lips, to trap her glances for ever into my eyes.
No, It’s all a vain chasing, a grabbing of emptiness, like straining the blue of the
sky. The body is there in the arms, the beauty flees, the weariness remains. At
dawn I return home, weary and shamefaced. What is of the mind,- how can it be
found in the body? 45
The quest continues in the next volume and this time, the poet does find the
golden boat, his long cherished dream. But the boatman, he dimly recognizes.
The boat collects all his harvest, then sails away, leaving him behind, forlorn.
Obviously, the poet’s search has still not met his target. But what is important for
him, is that he has not left the chase:
I clasp your hands, and my heart plunges into